Tibetan Buddhists aren’t the only problem that China’s leaders have to deal with, their Muslim population is growing restive as well:
SHANGHAI — Chinese officials said Wednesday that they were grappling with ethnic unrest on a second front, in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims protested Chinese rule last month even as Tibetans rioted in the southwest.
One Uighur demonstration, which appears to have been quickly suppressed, took place in the town of Hotan on March 23, at the same time China was deploying thousands of security officers across much of its southwest to put down Tibetan unrest.
Officials said the protest was staged by Islamic separatist groups seeking to foment a broader uprising in Xinjiang. China often accuses what it calls splittists and terrorists of being behind any ethnic disturbance. Human rights groups say that Chinese Uighurs, like Tibetans, have fought for greater freedom to practice their religion as well as more autonomy from Beijing.
The news of the protest in Xinjiang underscored the breadth of China’s problems with ethnic and religious minority groups in the country’s vast western regions, where there is a long history of unhappiness with Chinese rule. Ethnic groups Beijing has sought to pacify with economic development programs and suppress with a heavy police presence appear to be using the coming Olympic Games, to be held in Beijing in August, as an opportunity to press their grievances and attract international attention.
Despite their differences and the distance separating them, the Tibetans and the Uighar’s do have many things in common:
Like Tibetans in Tibet, Uighurs have historically been the predominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. In both Tibet and Xinjiang, indigenous groups have chafed at the arrival of large numbers of Han Chinese, the country’s predominant ethnic group, who have migrated to western regions with strong government support.
Uighurs, like Tibetans, have complained that recent Han arrivals now dominate their local economies, even as the Han-run local governments insert themselves deeper into schools and religious practices to weed out cultural practices that officials fear might reinforce a separate ethnic or religious identity.
In telephone interviews, Han residents of Hotan and nearby areas said there was a long history of distrust and tension between the Han and Uighurs. Some Han migrants said that the atmosphere remained volatile and that the Uighurs had been inspired by the Tibetan unrest.
“Some jobless people here have heard about the situation in Tibet, and they also want to make trouble,” said Wang Guoliang, a Han grocery store owner in Hotan. “They want independence and they want to expel the Han, whom they dislike.”
The question will be how willing the Chinese really are to crack down hard as the Olympics get closer.
